Apparently the internal alpha for Mists has begun. As I understand it, this is three steps back from an actual release. I don't think we can expect to see much - if anything - out of it, as this will be tightly controlled by Blizzard. Following this should be the Friends and Family Alpha (which is supposed to be secret, but given how the F&F Alphas for Wrath and Cataclysm went, we're probably going to be seeing quite a bit of content before the public beta begins.
Having signed on to the Annual Pass, I should be guaranteed a spot in the beta, but I think that's still a ways off. While it's exciting to know that there is a (probably horribly broken, bug-riddled and not remotely ready-for-the-public) build of it in existence now, I think we're still going to have to wait until the March press tour to actually see anything new content-wise (systems-wise, we've just gotten the updated talent calculator, so we can play around with that for now.)
So what do we know so far about the content? We got a fair amount of information at Blizzcon, talking about the feel of the different zones and previewing a couple of the dungeons, but there's a lot of info missing. But Blizzcon was several months ago, and I'm sure there's a lot more to show off now.
That said, what have we got so far?
We only know about two of the new five-man dungeons, Shado'pan Monastery and Stormstout Brewery. On one hand, I'm a little worried about the small dungeon count. Although Cataclysm eventually leveled out with the Hour of Twilight dungeons, we spent much of this expansion forced to run one of nine, and later one of only two dungeons whenever we wanted our random dungeon. (Frankly, I wish that there were an option to toss all the Hour of Twilight dungeons in with the 4.0s and the Zandalari in my random queue.)
On the other hand, though, this will be the first expansion with the Raid Finder implemented from the very start. Make no mistake, the Raid Finder is far, far more revolutionary than the Dungeon Finder was (though it could not exist without the systems developed for the DF.) While I enjoy 5-man content, I think their intention might be to de-emphasize running dungeon after dungeon every week, and to rather hop in the Raid Finder to satisfy your lust for VP (and shiny gear.) I could write a whole other post on the future of the Raid Finder, but I'll save this for later.
Then we've got Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance getting the Deadmines/Shadowfang Keep treatment. Much like the Raid Finder, I've got a lot to say on this topic, which I'm going to save for another post.
Raids have always been the pinnacle of WoW's PvE content, and I doubt that's going to change. So far we know about only one of the tier 14 raids, Mogu'shan Palace, which is a 6-boss instance. As of yet, we still don't know much about the Mogu and what might happen with them. My hope is that we can make a return to the days of double-digit raiding tiers. As I've said before, the most popular raids in WoW's history tend to be the huge ones. While I can sympathize with the desire to have a larger number of raids with fewer bosses in each, it can lead to situations like 4.2, which should have been half Firelands and half Abyssal Maw, but we missed out on the latter without getting a larger instance out of the former. It would be very disappointing to find that Mogu'shan Palace was the only serious raid, and the other two shipping with Mists were 1 or 2-boss instances.
The PvE scenarios are something that I'm very excited for, yet at the same time I worry that they could go the way of Path of the Titans. I never really missed PotT, because we never really got a good idea of what the hell it was going to be, but having dungeon-like, structured scenarios that you could do as many times as you'd want but without having to queue up is something I really want kept. Before 3.3, I used to run my friend's toons through low-level dungeons. Without the pressure of a PUG - or even just a group that isn't all in the same apartment - you can really take your time and enjoy messing around. I used to hate Blackrock Depths, but thinking of it as less of a "run" and more of a chance to explore made it a lot of fun.
Really, the more I look at this, the more I realize how little we know. However, rather than look at this as a bad thing, I'm assuming that Blizzard has done this intentionally. Not only is the story of Mists of Pandaria meant to be mysterious (look at the name,) but I think that they are emphasizing unfamiliarity. Cataclysm was all about the Old World - even if we wound up in such alien landscapes as Deepholm and the bottom of the ocean, it was meant to be stuff we could connect to the world we knew. Every final raid boss was a pre-established character - hell, we'd even killed two of them before (three if you count Onyxia separately.) Blizzard wants to flex its creative muscle and put together something that is truly new and that - gasp - might actually surprise us.
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